


Forever Breathless

by ryssabeth



Series: Situational Irony [8]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alterntare Universe, Ghost!taire, Grief, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 01:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/pseuds/ryssabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no breath to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever Breathless

When Grantaire wakes up, he can feel his toes. He can feels his toes and move his knees and his hips don’t hurt and the world isn’t bright with the sounds of pain.

But when he breathes there is no breath to take.

He doesn’t feel his lung expand of his chest fill up. He flares his nostrils and inhales.

And he feels nothing when he does that either.

He pushes up from the hospital bed—all of then gurneys to him, though Joly has made some distinction before—and swings his legs over the side. (But—but his legs, one set moves and another set does not. He doesn’t recall having four legs. He thinks he would notice, if he’d had them.)

Grantaire stumbles, when he stands, his trainers making no sound upon the floor as he turns and considers the bed he’d vacated.

Or.

Didn’t vacate.

Grantaire is still stretched upon the bed, eyes staring at the ceiling but—but not really staring at the ceiling. Staring at nothing, shirt cut open for the crash cart to get a better shot as his chest. His hips, from here, look a little bit like jam, with bits and pieces of bone in it.

( _“I’ll be_ right _back._

He’d lied.

Oh, _no_ , he’d _lied_.)

Shadows, behind him, stretch upon the floor and he tilts his head to glance over his shoulder, finding Joly and Enjolras there, blocking out the light—his room doesn’t have one. The dead don’t need it, he supposes.

Enjolras steps in, his knees bending stiffly as he walks, and he pulls a plastic chair up to the bed, stretching his hand over Grantaire’s forehead. He looks afraid to touch him, beginning only to push Grantaire’s hair out of his face when Joly disappears, his shadow flitting out of the room as quickly as it’d come.

“Enjolras,” he says. At least his voice still works, despite not having breath in his lungs.

Enjolras doesn’t react.

“Enjol _ras_.”

Grantaire wants to scream, curl up and _cry_ and wail and bring the Earth down over himself—but there’s no breath to take for that. Nothing to prepare him for shouting or crying or sobbing. Just vocal cords that work and lungs that don’t.

“Enjolras,” he says again.

And Enjolras doesn’t hear him.


End file.
